Recall
by Japheth
Summary: A corrupted gem tries so very hard to remember. A speculative look at the mind of those afflicted with corruption.


She gallops through the forest because she doesn't know what she is. She has claws but does not remember her claws, she has fur but does not remember her fur, she has four feet and a large body and she runs on four legs, but she doesn't remember, doesn't remember, can't remember.

She has wants that she doesn't understand. She wants to find her friends, but she can't remember what a friend is. She has places she needs to be, but she doesn't remember what a place is. So she runs, so she runs, so she runs, until she can't run anymore, past the grass, past the trees, long arms swinging deftly through the canopy. It is beautiful, but she doesn't know what beauty is, so she appreciates only the utility. It will help her keep running. She tries to remember, she tries to remember, she tries to remember, yearns to remember.

Occasionally, she has memories. Fleeting fragments of a shattered consciousness pierce the veil of a truncated mind, but as her instinct calls to burrow deeper, to grasp her claws to her head and let out a liberating scream to break the veil, a low droning hum seizes her, the faint hiss of an unearthly dirge and she can't. She can't remember, she can't remember, she doesn't want to remember.

The animals and the plants are afraid of her, know as well as she does that she doesn't belong, that she is monstrous, something wrong, something that is not supposed to be. She knows what she is not, but she does not know what she is, and so she howls, and she cries, and she shrieks into the sky, and her cries penetrate the night. She wants to know what she was, she wants to gaze into the clear stream and see her face, her real face, not the one given to her by the droning, but it's impossible, it's improbable, it's too hard to try.

Sometimes she passes others like her, unnatural, deformed, unsure. They are less able to _understand_ , though, for though they know that what they are is not what they should be, they do not know what to do. But she knows to do: She needs to run, and she needs to jump, and she needs to fight. So she fights them and they poof. When they are released, she cradles their gems, and she waits, and she watches. And when they emerge, and she sees them contort, sees them warp, she screeches and she runs at the dagger of recollection contained in that image. Of the time when it happened to her.

Occasionally she sees two-legged beings, afraid of her, watching from afar. They crouch with spears, as if to hunt her, and she approaches them. She wants to talk to them, but she doesn't know how to talk. She wants to protect them, but she doesn't know how to protect them. She only knows how to run, how to fight, how to jump, so she runs, she fights, she jumps, and the humans flee, and she is alone again, and it is silent, and she doesn't want it to be silent. She wants to talk, she wants to speak, she wants to hear her own voice and hear her own laugh.

Sometimes she passes by ruins that she knows have something to with her, but isn't sure what. Sometimes she stops at a ruin, and she stares at the faces gazing down, and she sees signs of four diamonds, and something curdles deep inside her. She hits herself against the wall, she hates them, she hates them, give it back to me, give it back to me, she tries to screech, but she has no mouth, she no vocal cords, she has nothing but the inarticulate wails that scare her too, because if that is all that she can do then how can she live?

Once she passed by a battlefield, an ancient field, stained red with the juice of the berries peppering the plain. She takes the berries, and she crushes them, and beneath her claws the juice rolls and squelches, and she rolls around, and for once she is happy. But she hears a bang, a shot, a loud noise of some sort, and she darts. The berries melt away, and the field is barren, and there are blasts all around, smoke rushing toward her. A thousand shadows stare down at her, and they grin, and they tell her that it's her fault, they tell her that they shouldn't have expected to win anyways, that she should have seen it coming. Seen what coming? She doesn't know, doesn't know, doesn't know. Please let her know.

Once she came to a great canyon embroidered with ancient figures, pockmarking the straight purple walls. They climb up to the top, and the valley is guarded by huge four-legged drills, still stalwart in their task after all these years. She does not remember her name, but she remembers the drills, and she has a familiarity with them, so she sits with them for a time, united in purpose. The drill is for nothing but its one task that has been set out for it, while she has forgotten all the tasks set out for her. They are alike in abandonment, left behind by a world that no longer cares.

The greatest terror is the silence, the enveloping silence, that is all around her. She can run and run and run, but as she traverses wilderness where no living thing dwells, she wonders where she is running, and as she begins to think, the droning comes back. The low buzzing eats at her mind, daring her to think, daring to dream, daring her to be. It is cruel and it is savage and effective, and so she doesn't think, she doesn't dream, she doesn't try to remember for a long time. She can jump and she can run and she can fight, and that is that.

One day she feels something growing beneath her, something strange, something terrible, ten thousand screaming splinters of a cause, without melody, without symphony. She wants to see what it is, but she cannot see, she cannot hear, she cannot even speak, so what is the point? She begins to think again, but she is struck only with the need to run further, to go to where it is. She digs, to see what that strange feeling means, but she can't, because it is too far down, she can't help them, she can't help them. So she gives up, and wails, and then she runs again.

Eventually her wandering takes her elsewhere. It has been many years now, it has been a long time, and the thinking comes and goes. Sometimes she is inert for long periods of time, simply sitting, or running without a thought in her head. Sometimes she becomes restless as she reaches into her mind past the pain to see what she could be, to see what she was. But now, she remembers something important.

Crystal Gems. A term, a word, a belief, something good, something powerful and pure, she wants to be with it, she wants to see it, but she can't, because she doesn't know what it is, only how it feels. She knows it feels good, so she curdles that feeling. We are the Crystal Gems, we are the Crystal Gems, I am a Crystal Gem, and I want to be with them.

So she runs, and she runs clearly, not blindly as she did before, and she seeks them out. And one day, one day, she sees it, she sees a temple in the shape of a beautiful figure, and she knows what beautiful is, and she remembers, and it hurts her so much as the droning sound needles every part of her body, a blizzard of sensation growing inside her to the point where it might immobilize her, but she doesn't care and she's sprinting. And they're rushing out, and she remembers, because they're her friends, and she remembers what a friend is, and there's other people too, other possible friends.

 _It's Pearl, and it's Garnet, and it's me it's your friend, it's me it's me it's me hello hello I want to be there I remember it's so wonderful I remember I remember I rememb_

Poof.


End file.
